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Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook (Developers Notebook) Review by W. Collier
Good for narrow focus on perl and testing
This book is a decent, gap-filling, focused and useful volume on testing perl with the use of the perl Test modules.
About the book:
This is narrowly and tightly focused on testing, and use of the "Test::" series of objects and techniques in Perl. It covers basic setups and use, and then expands into using mock objects and the mock modules, which are not covered well, if at all, in other published texts, at least not from the standpoint of being a software tester (as opposed to a coder).
It also shows how to drive and mock-up database testing, and the various ways to go about testing web sites and back-ends with Perl. Finally, it covers Test::Class, which sets up Unit Testing, for those coming from a jUnit or nUnit angle. And it touches on testing from other aspects, such as testing libraries or interactive code.
Criticisms:
I have found that most of the O'Reilly "Notebooks" are priced too highly for their small amount of content, and the content is usually very minimal. This book is the one exception I've found in that series.
That being said, I still believe that it should be priced around $20, or perhaps $25. But $5-10 is a minor quibble considering this is the only book of its type (Perl testing).
Another valid criticism is that much of the information in this book can be found spread all over the internet in various places, and some parts can be found in other Perl books. That is true - but ultimately irrelevant. Disparate clusters of information without completeness or context is simply not very valuable when compared to a solid text focused on the subject matter.
Bottom Line:
It is a good compilation and reference for its subject, with a lot of information and context provided, which makes it superior to a collection of links and snippets here and there on the internet.
If you are a Perl coder or a tester, this is a handy book to have on your shelf.